Thank You!

Occasionally I find myself in a position where I'm extremely thankful
for a person or an organization, but I cannot find an appropriate forum
to express my gratitude. In some cases the person is a total stranger.
In other cases it's an organization that provides no obvious mechanism
to provide feedback. Or, it could just be that I want the world to
know how much I appreciate the gesture. All of these reasons contributed
towards my motivation in creating this page.

Thu Apr 29 10:58:36 PDT 2010

Google

My first "thank you" goes to Google. Specifically, it goes to the
team who provides Gmail spam
filtering. My spam folder regularly contains somewhere around 8 or 10
thousand messages at any given time, none of which I
have the slightest interest in reading. Considering spam gets deleted
automatically 30 days after detection, this translates into thousands
of new spam messages monthly. I don't know how they determine what is
spam and what is not spam, but they almost never get it wrong. Thanks!

Tue Sep 14 00:27:04 PDT 2010

Jackie Wilson

My next thanks goes to Jackie Wilson. My earliest memory of hearing
your song "Higher and Higher" is in
Ghostbusters II
making the statue
of liberty come to life. Now, sitting here past midnight, processing
speed dating forms for
Your Asian Connection,
knowing I have to give
a presentation early tommorrow morning, listening to Higher and Higher
in the background really gives me motivation to keep going.

Thu Nov 17 10:15:16 PST 2011

Kaiser Permanente

This thanks goes out to the wonderful staff at Kaiser Permanente in
Santa Clara, California. I recently underwent arthroscopic surgery on
my left shoulder to repair damage caused by various mishaps
earlier this year (including five different incidents that resulted in
shoulder dislocations). It's hard to imagine how this could have gone
any more smoothly. I met with the surgeon (Bob Nguyen) who showed me my
MRI results and explained to me in detail what the problem was. He then
explained how he planned to fix it and we set a date for the surgery.
I arrived at the Kaiser facility at 6am on the day of the surgery.
I was terrified. However, from the moment I walked in the door I felt
like royalty. Every person who assisted me that day (and there were
many) greeted me by name with a smile, took the time to explain what they
were about to do, and asked if I had any questions before proceeding.
These people are true professionals in every sense of the word.
They helped me relax, made me comfortable, and the entire process went
off without a hitch.

Sat Jan 26 22:25:16 PST 2013

Southwest Airlines

My girlfriend Julia
and I took a trip up to Vancouver on Southwest Airlines flight 702 to
spend the weekend with her son & daugher-in-law before Chinese New
Year. Shortly after landing in Seattle, Julia inadvertently left her
purse in the restroom at the Seattle Airport. In our rush to claim our
bags and pick up our rental car, neither of us realized this until we
were already onboard the shuttle bus to the rental car facility. Julia
jumped off the bus just as the doors were closing and ran back into the
terminal to get her purse, leaving me shocked & confused with all the
bags. As the bus started moving, two significant things occurred to me: 1)
Julia's cell phone was in her purse, which she didn't have. We had no way
to contact each other. 2) The restroom was on the other side of airport
security--there was absolutely no way Julia was going to get back there,
particularly with no ID whatsoever. However, as fortune would have it,
the flight attendant who served our drinks saw Julia running through the
airport terminal and stopped her, asking "Hey, did you forget your purse
in the restroom?" This particular flight attendant, whose name I cannot
recall, happened to go to the same restroom as Julia, saw the purse,
recognized it as belonging to a passenger on the flight she just worked,
and, knowing Julia would never be able to get past airport security again,
brought her purse through security to the front ticket counter. I have always
loved flying Southwest Airlines. This flight attendant went above &
beyond her duties, giving me even more reason to believe that customer
service simply doesn't get any better than this.